Blizzard of Activity, Pt. 1

Hello again and apologies for an extended hiatus from blogging. Part of the problem was a dreaded hard drive crash mid-January which briefly severed my link to the English-speaking human world (necessitating my fallback to linking exclusively to the Golden Retriever world) for a week. I'm now referring to that January 18, 2008 as my personal "Black Friday," since just the evening before I was celebrating finally establishing our wireless Internet connection at home--a huge technical and mental victory--only to have my wireless Internet, computer hard drive AND espresso machine all break on Friday (unrelated incidents). A trifecta of insult, injury and injustice, no doubt.

The following week Steph & I conducted a more-or-less unexpected trip back to Chicago for a brief 4-1/2 days! Yes, we scripted our original U.S.-return plans for July but Steph attended a late January work meeting and I, after wrestling with joining her or not, ultimately cashed in some frequent-flier miles and accompanied her (not literally, as we traveled separately). Zürich lifesavers Dave and Heather graciously agreed to watch The Hairball. Upon our triumphant (of what, I'm not sure) return, we'd been gone exactly 13 weeks which somehow simultaneously felt like a lifetime and no time.

With only four weekdays to spend in Chicago and with Stephanie nearly fully booked with work lunches and dinners, we announced our trip to few friends and colleagues and actually socialized with even fewer. For everyone we connected with briefly, we would have loved to triple the conversation time and see five times the people, but it wasn't in the cards. And we felt a bit presumptious asking people to rearrange schedules with short notice on a random Tuesday or Thursday or whatever just to see us--it's only been three months and we look the same: short, thin, brown hair, etc (I've grown a light beard, Stephanie has not).

That Sunday night we each packed one mostly-empty and one completely-empty suitcase, in anticipation of returning to Switzerland with a veritable pirate's booty of inexpensive American goods, for which our list was considerably longer than Santa's during the high season. Toiletries and medicines and food items (incl. black beans and chili sauces) and home goods and electrical adaptors and computer accessories and English books on and on. Not to mention a meticulously planned strategic blueprint of activities such as depositing checks and mailing financial correspondence and shipping birthday gifts and recovering a broken hard drive and haircut appointments and dry cleaning and on and on. Now you may be thinking (somewhat smarmily), "What, they don't have banks and post offices and barbers and dry cleaners in Switzerland?" To which the answer is yes, of course they do, if you enjoy paying triple for everything and/or feeling like a monolingual fool conducting simple transactions and then departing uncertain if you actually got what you needed. Ordering schnitzel and coffee we do in Zürich; certified mailings of notarized stock-certficate transfers we do in Chicago. For the gray area between, we leaned towards Chicago on this trip.

Of course half the challenge was simply showing up. Stephanie flew direct on a paid Swiss Air ticket; I connected through JFK on an American Airlines award ticket (read: free). She left the Zürich apartment two hours after me Monday AM and arrived at the Hyatt Regency Chicago in time to unpack, attend a work dinner and sleep for two hours before I arrived at midnight, fresh from a six-hour delay/layover that extended my 15-hour itinerary to 21 hours (yes, I could have reached Bangkok in that time). To make matters worse, I have no international-enabled cell phone and thus no communication method besides email and her hotel Internet connection wasn't working. She was on the phone with American asking, "Have you seen my husband?" when I dragged in. Oh well, no one said flying 4,000 miles for free was easy.

So how did it feel to be back? Honestly, a bit puzzling. The first two days in Chicago felt like Zürich was home and Chicago was foreign; the second two days felt more like Chicago was home again, just in time to depart. Zürich felt weird the first day back but then normal again on Day 2 after eating a flaky croissant with some unpasteurized oozy goat cheese. Overall, it was all slightly unsettling. There must be a psychological benefit to just staying put for a while.

I'll provide a brief descripition of our Chicago activities next blog, but first I must extend kudos to the Midwestern winter weather for making our transition to Switzerland that much easier. After sweating in wool coat/scarf/hat through a high of 49F on Tuesday afternoon, the temperature plummeted with a sudden onslaught of rain, freezing rain, snow and ice to a high of 13F on Wednesday (that's a 36 degree difference for non-mathematicians). The sidewalks transformed from merely slightly damp to sporting a half-inch of snow and treacherous ice during the time we ate dinner on Tuesday night. Snow continued intermittantly but usually in sideways, eyeball-stinging gusts Tuesday night through Friday, ultimately depositing nearly a foot. The weather in Zürich has been just a touch, shall we say, uh, milder this winter, with average highs in the mid-30's to mid-40's and some occasional drizzle. I'd never thought I'd say it, but even after 30+ years each for Steph and me living in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Chicago--grizzled, windchill-hardened, scaly-skinned Midwest Eskimos--one's blood thins rather quickly. It wasn't that we couldn't handle the weather, but my usual sadistic glee at tolerating it seems to have vanished. Thanks, Chicago!

OK, more trip details to follow...